Impression Management
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and we're putting on our best faces in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Right? Our front stage self. Yeah. And speaking of stage, Chuck, I have a great intro to this.

I believe it was Rush who first said, all the world's a stage and the men and women on it are merely players or something like that. Yeah. Performers and portrayers. Yeah. Each another's audience. Is that what he says? I never knew. And I've never bothered to look up the lyrics because there's definitely some words in there. I'm like, I don't know what Geddy Lee just said. Yeah. I think I'm pretty sure that's right. It's a great, great song. Limelight. Very well written. Very original stuff. Yeah.

So we're talking about impression management today, right? Yes, sir. And what do you think about it? Well, I think that I just the more I've done this show over the years, the more I realized that I could have been a sociologist.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, man. This stuff fascinates me to no end. I took one sociology class in college and that's it. And I remember at the time, you know, when very little outside of English major classes interested me, I was like, man, this is super interesting to me, but not enough to pursue it. But human behaviors is endlessly fascinating to me.

Yeah. And one of the things sociology gets beat up and edged out and elbowed in the face by psychology a lot unfairly, I think, too. I'm not talking about social psychology. No, this is sociology. Yeah. And if sociology started out, we should say psychology.

basically examining massive institutions. It was macro sociology, religion, like economics, politics, that kind of stuff. And just how people behaved and interacted or how people came together to form these institutions. And then the guy we're going to talk about today came along. He's like, let's kind of zoom in a little more. And like you were saying, he kicked off this type of sociology that was,

examines like people, just interactions, very small interactions that sometimes we don't even know what we're doing. And apparently you're very interested in that. I am. And you know what? It seems like the more I've learned about Irving Goffman through today's research and, you know, researching him a little further, like he's a Canadian American sociologist. And this is like the mid 20th century, 1950s ish. When he started doing a lot of this work, he seems to me like someone who was

Just fascinated by human behavior even more, even in a way that like other sociologists weren't, especially at the time. Yeah, for sure. He yeah. And he also I read that he developed like a real sympathy for the people who were pushed to the fringes of society unfairly, basically across the board.

So he was not only like a really good sociologist and very intuitive and apparently had a really interesting writing style too. He loves a good like turn of phrase. He was also like a very empathetic, good person from what I can tell. Oh man, I'm so glad I didn't.

Hook my wagon to the wrong dude. Right. No, you hooked it to the right guy. And when it's somebody from the 1950s, you never know what's going to happen there. We should probably say we're talking about, though, impression management or self-presentation or perception management.

is basically these are terms that he all came up he came up with all of these essentially and it's it's just how you present to others and you know we'll get into the the nuts and bolts of it but how how much you might think about that how much is automatic how much is intuition how much of it is authenticity

it's super fascinating to me. I just, I love this stuff. Yeah. And a lot of it, I mean, when we start talking about it too, it'll just seem very common sense. Like, yeah, of course you're going to, you know, mind your P's and Q's and sit up straight and be friendly in a job interview. And that is a type of impression management, but it is way more granular than that to the point where,

And like if you're into language, linguistics, that kind of thing, the entire purpose of a conversation is to exchange information. Like I know this. Now I'm sharing it with you. Another person says, thank you very much. And that's what a conversation is for. As far as impression management goes and Irving Goffman and his ilk.

conversations are essentially performances that two people share and do for one another that helps create a version of ourselves that we kind of walk around with and that that changes. And there's very little point to a conversation other than that is it's a, it's a radically different view of things. Yeah. I also think it's interesting and this, you know, this is all just precursor stuff that we're babbling on about, but, um,

when you said it just seems like instinct or whatever, would you say common sense to do these things? Not everybody, my friend. And that is something that I've gotten better about over the years. It used to

be something that really bothered me and I would, you know, leave an interaction with somebody or something and with Emily and be like, God, like just social cluelessness is such a turnoff for me. Like read the room, buddy, that kind of thing. But then the more I've gotten older and the more we've all learned about different neurodiversities, I've definitely found myself in a place where I'd try to be like, hey, I don't know what this person's deal is. Like they may be struggling just to present themselves as

you know, passing or masking. And, you know, we're going to talk about all this stuff in a situation to just to sort of get by. So I try to really keep that stuff in mind these days. For sure. And I feel like there's there's different tranches. Yeah, there's the one you just described. There's people who this is so effortless to they don't even have to think about it. And they're just great basically across the board.

Then there's everybody else in the middle. Some people in the middle are better at it than others. Some people think too hard about it and they become obvious and clumsy. And essentially, though, no one can escape it, I think is my point. There's nobody out there who doesn't engage in some sort of impression management essentially their entire lives. Yeah. And neurodiversity aside, again, which we'll talk about, there are also people who

who aren't neurodivergent. You are just clueless a-holes. And I have found too in my life that I believe narcissism plays a part. I think narcissists have a much harder time

because they're generally just have their heads up their own butts and are so about the self that they are often the ones that I found that if they don't have some sort of you know neurodivergence that's the reason why they are like they are it may be because of narcissism is it you know usually the reply after someone is like read the room buddy they're like what what I'm perfect what do you mean read the room you read the room exactly

So let's get into it and we'll start with Goffman and where he got his start. Again, this is Irving Goffman, groundbreaking sociologist. He started off doing fieldwork in a Scottish village. And rather than figuring out how the city council worked for that or the village elders basically kept everybody in line.

He just enmeshed himself in the village and just paid attention to how people interacted with one another. And really, like, that's a very anthropological way of studying. It was very not how they did it at the time among sociologists. So he was groundbreaking. He essentially went like, I'm going to take this field and just put it, take it in a different direction. So...

Let's go. - Yeah, for sure. He wrote a book in 1956 called "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." What a great title, no colons. It's exactly what it says it is.

a very big book in the world of sociology and the International Sociological Association named it as a tenth most important sociology book of the 20th century and in this book is where He touched on what you talked about with this sort of performance aspect of our everyday lives with he didn't invent it, you know, it was an existing concept but dramaturgical theory which is what you said like we're all sort of operating on a social script and

Sort of like the Terminator, like it's pretty limited. You don't have endless options. Like maybe you should say one of these four things at this dinner party when someone brings up a thing. And even if it's a brand new situation, you're drawing on the scripts that you've used over and over in your life to work out how to interact in the scene.

Right. Yeah. And it's also, yeah, it's been shaped by interactions with other people. It's shaped by what you've seen on TV, which can be very dangerous because stuff that's like hilarious on a sitcom does not necessarily translate well into real life. It's like you're being a huge jerk or you're not really that funny, you know, in the case of somebody who models themselves after friends. Yeah. Like pull my finger doesn't always break the ice. No, pull my finger always works. Okay, great.

But yeah, so what his point was in this dramaturgical theory, and like you said, he didn't invent it, but if you look into it, he's basically like he's the guy who took it and ran with it. Yeah. No matter where you are, you're performing, and depending on where you are, your performance is going to be different, right? So if you're sitting there at school, you're going to act different than you do at a bar. Yeah. Right? Sure.

Ideally. Yeah, you would hope for sure. And then if you're at work, you know, you're going to act a little different from that, too. And it's essentially even when you're hanging out with your closest friends, sociologists believe that you're still performing in some way, shape or form, just probably less than you normally do. Yeah. And some think even when you're by yourself.

that that still informs how you talk to your little person on your shoulder. Right. Which is really interesting. He talked about appearance and like clothing even and how they will convey. And when we say actor, we're just talking about a person. But in his context of it all being a performance, he called them actors. But, you know, your costume that you put on is going to convey like maybe your social status, maybe what kind of job you have.

There's that outward appearance and then there's the manner in which you deal with someone. And obeying the sort of societal rules in a social situation is a big time thing. And if you start to do things that don't comply with what people generally expect at a dinner party or on an elevator or something like that, it can upset people around you. I think the interesting thing that I took from that is, I mean, that's kind of common sense, but

When you're writing like a screenplay or something like dramatic writing or a play, the most interesting characters are usually people that do things that surprise you or that fly in the face of maybe a social norm or make a decision that's unexpected. So I think it's interesting that in drama, it makes for very compelling characters. But in real life, we kind of don't want that generally. Yeah, like the manic pixie dream girl, right? Yeah.

I don't know what you mean by that. I mean, I know what that term means, but I don't know how it relates to this. Oh, they're always doing like crazy stuff that like makes the protagonist fall in love with them or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got you. So in terms of a script that might be engaging even within the world of the script, whereas in real life, I don't know, a Man at Pixie Dream girl might go over, but the person saying pull my finger at the dinner party may not. Well, it's funny that you say drama too, because to me, where my mind went was comedy. Like, all

Almost all comedy is a person behaving in a way that is, it violates the situation that they're in, violates the scene and the script that they're supposed to be saying. That's all from Adam Sandler to late Adam Sandler. It's all basically that. Yeah. I mean, that's the basis of joke telling really is the unexpected thing happens. Super interesting. And then one other thing too is,

He made a really good point. He said that the characters or the people who are interacting and, again, just essentially performing, that they're trying to come to a common definition of the situation is what he called it. Yeah. That expected norm. Yeah. And so, like, if you see, say, a scene on TV, it's just such a perfect analogy because that's essentially what he's talking about. And there's just one dude standing at a bus stop and it's a businessman, say. Mm hmm.

That scene is in a superposition. It hasn't been defined yet because there's only one person. And by the entrance of the next person, that's when the scene will start to be defined. If it's that guy's boss, he's going to act totally different than if it's a pickpocket or something like that.

So the scene hasn't been defined yet, but regardless of how it ends up, like what scene it is, both are playing their role, essentially, that we just innately know almost. Not innately because it's learned, but it becomes just second nature for most people. Yeah, for sure. He also thought that, you know, there's obviously verbal and nonverbal parts to this with body language and how you dress and all that stuff. But Goffman himself thought that the nonverbal part

Did I say non-purple? If you did, it was lost on me, but I like non-purple more. Okay. I think I might've said non-purple anyway, uh, which is basically every other color, but purple. Yeah. Uh,

He thought the nonverbal part was the most significant because it's harder to fake, which I think is pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that also, like, while you're performing, quote unquote, again, do we need to keep saying that? Like, people know what we mean, right? Yeah. I mean, we could just say interacting with another person. Yeah. While you're interacting as the actor. Yeah.

Right. You may be aware that you have like a goal in mind, like I've got to, you know, I'm at this thing I got to present really well. Or you may not. Yeah, you may not have a goal. It may be, as we'll see, you're just trying to keep from freaking the other person out.

You know, like you're not trying to get anywhere. You're not trying to advance or get something from the person or make somebody think that you're great. But just being engaged, forced into a social interaction like that, you have to perform a certain way or else the other person is going to be weirded out, is going to want to get away from you. Sometimes people get really upset when somebody violates norms. And I think you can really, you can...

This explains it a lot because it's like someone is expecting somebody to behave in a certain way. That person doesn't.

doesn't behave in that way, then the people around them might get angry at that person, even though they might just be being themselves. Yeah. Or get scared. Like, you know, when you get on an elevator by yourself and there's only one person on there, you act in a certain way as a almost way to say you're safe right now. Like, you don't you don't need to worry about me. I'm just going to my room. I'm not going to.

I'm not that guy that's going to be some weirdo on the elevator. I promise you're OK. Yeah. Or even like try to strike up a conversation like that. Yeah, that's unnerving and disarming. Yeah. I mean, I think definitely not as much for me as for some people because I was raised in the South. I'm more used to that. And definitely also in an enclosed space like an elevator, the norms are much different than like walking down the street or something. For sure.

You know, you're trapped basically in that little box. Right. Yeah. You have a captive audience. And now I'm panicking. So just to kind of wrap up the whole dramaturgical theory part, Goffman said we have our front stage selves, which I think you referred to earlier, right? That's us right now. And that's what we do on our job every day.

Okay. Yeah. But I feel like we're not that much different in real life. No, I think you're right. I mean, that's one of the reasons this show works, I think, and why a lot of podcasts work is because people are their more true selves. But-

it's also sort of the best version of our true self. Like we're not the jerks that we can be in real life. Yeah. And that's a really great point that we'll see later. Like just because you're doing this doesn't mean you're a phony or inauthentic. You're just drawing on the parts of yourself that are already there that apply to the situation best in presenting those.

Yeah, totally. And I said, we, I meant me. You're not a jerk. So I'm just speaking for myself. Hey man, I'm always happy to be included with you. I'm along for the ride. Well, everybody can be like that here and there. That's all I'm saying.

Right. Right. I know what you're saying. You don't have to explain it to me. All right. I was explaining it to everyone else. Didn't think I was just dragging you down with me. So you've got front stage selves. This is when you're on stage. You're really out there. Uh-huh. There's backstage when you're hanging with your homies. Yeah. Having a cigarette. Homeboys. Yeah. Homegirls. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And just general homies. Maybe your family, if you get along with your family and you might feel comfortable and calm around them. So that would be your backstage self. Nice caveat. But note this. He's not saying front stage self and then yourself. It's still a backstage self. You're still attached to the stage. You're still in the theater. Yeah. Even when you're hanging out with your homies.

Yeah, that's true. And then there's the offstage, and that is when it's just one-on-one. This is the best. And that's still a kind of performance. Yeah, this example is just so, it just nails it. When you're a teacher and you see your student at the grocery store. Yeah, see them IRL. That's like, that's such a jarring thing to see as a kid. Oh, man.

And it's thrilling. It's exciting because they don't exist outside of that role. No, exactly. So now you see them and they're not dressed like they normally are. Oh, man. They're friendly to your mom or something like that. And then they're buying olives, too. And they look like they're really into figuring out which olives they want. Right. So that's just for the kid. For the teacher, you still have to comport yourself in a way that's like, you know, I'm not going to just start cussing in front of the student. Right.

and just talk like I might normally talk. I still have to pretend or act like I do when I'm this kid's teacher. But that still it's like it doesn't necessarily fit the grocery store stage. So that teacher's in a really weird position right then. That would be offstage interactions. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I love that one.

time for a break yes all right we're just getting cooking everybody so come back more if you want to learn more about yourself right after this learning stuff from joshua and charles

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Alright, so one of the keys to Goffman's theory is how important it is to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others. He talked about face work, like saving face or losing face, not wanting to be embarrassed, but also he wrote about just your facial expressions, especially in terms of how you disagree with somebody. Even if you say the words,

that you think are the right way to disagree with someone, but your face says WTF, like that conveys a confusing message. So even the facial expressions you make have to be considered. Yeah, it's that speech plus nonverbal that equals your performance, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's funny to see people who are trying to say something, but their facial expression just doesn't match up.

Yeah. I mean, that's a problem I've had to work on in my own marriage with not being the best communicator, which, you know, which is Emily being like, well, you're saying one thing, but that's not what I'm getting. Right. Yeah. No, I don't want to play Red Dead Redemption. That's always true.

The opposite, that is. Right. So the other point of that, in addition to that nonverbal use of face, you said also you're trying to help people save face, right? So I said earlier that you might be forced into a social, to act in a social situation a certain way just because you don't want to freak out your friend's mom who you saw at the mall by acting bizarrely or, you know, in a different way than you should. Similarly, if your friend's mom at the mall says,

falls like slips and falls in the middle of the mall and is embarrassed, you are going to do something that your performance calls for you to do something to help her save face as well. That's part of face work, too. Yeah, for sure. And face work is another dramatic term. Oh, is it? I didn't know that. Yeah, I think face work and body work. That's all a drama thing. That makes sense. Is there a learning how to move within your space?

Yeah, private parts work. That's awesome. So to Goffman, it could be an obvious thing, like if you're on a first date or something like that, or like you mentioned earlier, a job interview, like that's the super obvious situation. But a lot of times it's really everyday interactions still count. And there's a philosopher named Lucy MacDonald who was writing about like when somebody falls down in public,

Almost always the very first thing that'll happen is that person will look around to see if anyone saw them and based on that there It's gonna change their reaction and it reminded me of that story I've told before about in college when I saw the guy bust Bust his butt on a bike in Athens right and the books went spilling all over the sidewalk and this dude just Opened one of the books laying on his side with his bike wheel spinning act of like he was reading it mm-hmm and it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen

And then the other day on my new bike, I tried to do a wheel slide in a gravel parking lot. And I busted my butt and fell. I didn't go, you know, ass over apple cart, but I hit the dirt. And the first thing I did as a 54-year-old was look up and see if anybody saw me. You didn't jump up and say, I meant to do that? Well, if somebody had seen me, I would have, but nobody saw me. So I just sat there and was like, you know, nuts.

Right. So if you do that, like say if people do see you, you might like look back like closely at the ground. What did I trip over? What's wrong with this bike? Or you might say like, I hate Mondays or something like that. And what you're doing is something you mentioned earlier.

You're reassuring people like I'm not a threat to you or to the social order. That was just a total accident. Yeah. And it might seem like that person is overly self-conscious or something like that, or they might be a little neurotic. I feel like they have to do that.

But the philosopher Lucy MacDonald that you mentioned also points out that that's actually not what's going on, that everybody feels like they need to do that. And that it's a rational response to the social expectations that we have of one another. So it just kind of reveals this social intelligence that that most people have that is.

You don't even know that you're doing in a lot of cases and that you feel even compelled to do internally. Like when I do that, if I'm so embarrassed, I will blurt something out.

Like, oops, or I hate Mondays. And it feels like it's coming up from, you know, my guts and then out of my mouth. Like, it's not something where I'm like, I better say something really quick. It's just an involuntary reaction, essentially, because it's so ingrained. Yeah, because you're not a sociopath.

Yeah, I like to think so. Yeah, I like to think so, too. It's funny thinking about that guy in Athens that fell. He didn't even look around because it wasn't like, oh, did someone see me? Because hundreds of people for sure saw him. Right. It was like a crowded campus. So I felt bad for the guy. But it was hysterical. And one day I'm going to meet that person, I think. Yeah. I wonder what he's doing now. Yeah.

Can you imagine if I was at a party one day and somebody was telling that story? Like one time in college, I wrecked my bike and acted like I was reading a book. What would you do? Would you buy him something? I would hug him immediately and be like, I saw that. And I've been telling that story for 40 years. That's great. 40? No, not even. 30. Yeah. 30 is about right. Yeah. And he would be like, I'm not a hugger. Then I've screwed up yet again. Yeah.

So I said that when people fall and they're saying like, oops, or I hate Mondays, or they're looking at the crack, or they're going through their book, whatever, they're reassuring people that they're actually normal. And the norm in countries like the U.S., say, in the West, is what's called civil inattention, to where you –

Ideally, you acknowledge the presence, the existence of another person so that you're on a subway with. And that's where it ends. And then, yeah, it ends there, right? Something that I find dismaying is I see more and more that acknowledgement doesn't even happen. It's just totally ignoring one another. And that, man, that gets me. Especially if you nod at somebody else and they just ignore you. I think that is awful. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, not to be old man here, but cell phones and smartphones have definitely played a part in that, I think, because people escape into the comfort of like, well, I'll just look at this instead. Yeah. Yeah. And they're just like, oh, what's on my phone? Yeah. I mean, if you were raised in the South or have lived in the South, then...

you're more comfortable with more acknowledgement and maybe even a brief conversation with a stranger. Sure. That can be very off-putting for people that aren't used to that. So I try to remember that when I am in a, maybe I've had a drink or two and I struck up a conversation with someone I don't know. On an elevator? Yeah, I've done that too. I did it last week, in fact. So speaking of elevators, Chuck, you mentioned going into an elevator and turning around.

And what a violation of the social order that is. The elevator is this perfect little encapsulation for sociologists to study. Because we just know what to do when somebody gets on an elevator and there's already people on there. Everybody spreads out, rearranges themselves to make room for this person in their personal space.

And it's not like we're like, okay, I'm going to go over here. You go here. And then when somebody, next person comes on, you get off. And then this person is going to go where you were. It just happens. And it's a beautiful synchronized effort, right? It really is.

But when sociologists get on elevators and they turn around, there's an apocryphal story about Irving Goffman doing that and studying and people just flipping out by it. No, they don't turn around. They just go straight in and stand there looking at the rear. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Right. Not well put. So that's actually not just what sociologists like to do. It was like a big one on candid camera back in the day for a while. Yeah. And yeah.

There was one Candid Camera episode where they did the opposite, where the elevator was already had a bunch of people on it, but they were facing the rear when the doors opened. Oh, wow. And the person who was being, I guess, pranked came on. I wouldn't get on that elevator car. So this person...

They got on and they kind of looked like they didn't know what to do for a second. And then they turned and they faced the rear. I knew it. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. It was almost like they thought that they hadn't gotten the revised pages that day and everybody else did. So they just needed to go along with it because they didn't want to upset the apple cart. Things have changed. That's funny.

This is not what they expected, but they weren't about to be the one who just stuck to the original norm and upset everybody else. Wow. Did they yell out, can I have the new sides, please? Someone to fly those in? Line. That's really funny, and that doesn't surprise me. And I bet the live audience at Canada Cambridge got a big old hootie laugh on that one. Man, that Alan Funt.

So there was a guy named Harold Garfinkel, another sociologist that would, I mean, he called them breaching experiments, but it's really messing with people. And he did things like that, like sit down on the escalator or just like point at somebody. And I'm not a big fan of those kind of experiments. No, but they're all over YouTube, people doing that. I bet. It's pretty funny. But yeah, if you're ever in a mall and somebody sits down on an escalator or whatever, it's probably a sociologist experiment.

Yeah. If not, just politely go in the other direction. Well, no, that's why you carry a water gun around with you. You just scored them in the face a few times and say, stand up.

Super soaker. So there's ways that we figure out how to perform, because like I said, a lot of it just seems ingrained. A lot of it requires thought, too, especially if you're trying if you have a goal, like you're trying to become a member of a country club, which everybody's been through that. Yeah. And these two researchers, they were psychologists back in 1990, 1990.

Mark Leary and Robin Kowalski, they basically figured out how we do this kind of stuff. And they broke it into two things. There was impression motivation, why you're doing this, and impression construction, how you're doing this. Yeah. And as far as motivation, it's based on a few factors. One is how relevant a person thinks their image is to achieve this goal. So in other words,

Does it really matter here how I'm acting to get what I want? How valuable the goal is, which is, this is something I really want. Am I trying to get a job or just whatever, something a little less stakes? And then finally, the extent to which they believe they're not currently being perceived in the most useful way. In other words,

How much do I need to pour it on here to get what I want? Yeah. Like how am I being perceived and what do I need to do to change that? Right, exactly. So you put all those together and that's your motivation for figuring out some impression management. Again, this is the ones where you're like actually giving thought to it. Right. In impression construction, how you actually carry this stuff out, they broke into five little parts. One is your self-concept.

Right. So you're going to base how you carry this out on how you feel you are. So you're trying you're starting with your authentic self, ideally. Right. Because people value authenticity. People don't want to just keep up a lie. Again, that's a half hour sitcom right there because it always crumbles. It always crumbles everybody in real life and on sitcoms. In 22 minutes. And then it gets resolved.

Right. Exactly. So your self-concept is where you're going to start and you're going to kind of draw from that. Imagine a big steamer trunk on stage that Carrot Top's going through just pulling a bunch of props out of. That's what you're doing when you first start to figure this out. That's going through the steamer trunk of your self-concept. Wait a minute. Are you saying right now we are Carrot Top?

The entire world is. Yeah. All the world's a stage and we are merely keratops. Keratops. Then there's the desired identity. So you're trying to protect an identity and you base that on what like what you what you want people to think you like and don't like or what you want to be or don't want to be. Right. Right.

So you might really try to distance yourself from something you don't want to identify with. Yeah. Like, oh boy, how about that John Legend?

That was random. And all that immense talent. Like, get over it, buddy. You want to be very careful with this. This is one of those things that shows what a tightrope you can be walking when you're purposefully constructing impression management. If you're, in that case, yucking someone's yum, that can turn people off and ruin all of the other stuff that you just did. So it can backfire. Someone opens up their jacket and they're wearing the John Legend shirt. Right. Or you accidentally say it to John Legend because you didn't recognize him. Yeah.

I don't know why I pulled him out. I know nothing much about him other than La La Land and the fact that he's super talented. Yeah. No, he was perfect. I mean, totally neutral. Everybody loves him. Like it was just that was great. Non-controversial in almost any way. Yeah. All right. He's managed to distance himself from his wife's public persona. So, yeah, non-controversial. Who is she? Chrissy Teigen.

Oh, I know that name, but I don't know much about her either. That's fine. All right. Moving on. Yeah. So the next one is target value. And it's basically saying like you're just going to take those things from your steamer trunk of your authentic self. And you're going to adorn yourself with the ones that make the most sense for this identity that you're trying to be viewed with. Yeah. But based on what you think they want. Right. Yeah. But again, this is not where you're just like, you know.

stealing stuff from other people and making it your own, you're going, ideally, you're going into your own authentic self and saying, this one makes the most sense to what this person's going to expect or want. Yeah, exactly. Like aligning yourself with someone else's values is

ideally stopping short of like, you know, doing something that's not inauthentic. Yeah. And there's one thing I think we should say at this point, because it's really easy to just assume like this is what everybody should be doing. And I think it's worth questioning. It's not inherently a good thing to change yourself or

or to rearrange yourself, it can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing too. So just know we're not saying like you should be out doing this. You should really be thinking about what you have inside yourself that you can impress other people with. That's not what we're saying, but people do do that. And that falls under the umbrella of impression management. Yeah, we're saying this is what Leary and Kowalski have noticed happens. Yeah, blame it on them.

And the rain. And then there's current – oh, I'm sorry. I skipped one, didn't I? Role constraints. Presenting yourself in a way that's –

Well, that's kind of the same thing as target value, except target value is a little less that I want to align myself with what you may be into. Yeah. And a little more of just like the general expectations of a social role. Right. Like you would wear a top hat and a monocle to a meeting with a bunch of bankers because that's what they would expect you to do. Exactly. And then there's current social image, which is what you perceive of yourself. And if other people if you think other people perceive you in a way you don't like. Yeah.

There are some other techniques that people can use. Flattery, of course, will get you everywhere. Ingratiation, stuff like that. Conforming to expectations, that's kind of like the other stuff, I think, like role constraints and stuff like that. And then a big one is...

Like, suppressing your emotion and maintaining your self-control. Like, again, that doesn't mean to be inauthentic, but that just means, like, read the room. Is it time for me to be overly emotional about something or is it not? Do I need to kind of put a lid on that for now? Yeah. If you're triggered and you have a temper because people are taking too long in the grocery store line, don't push a whole load of groceries back into an aisle and shout a curse word and storm out. No. No.

I've seen it in real life, actually. Oh, I'm sure. It's like, what is going on, buddy? It's hard to not think just constantly what's wrong with people. But you know what? The fact is, again, as I get older, there's a lot wrong with a lot of people. So I try to keep that in mind. Yeah. Everybody's got some sort of burden they're carrying and some people are more vocal about it than others, I guess. That's a very nice way to say it. Some people misproject it in the wrong way more loudly than others.

That's another way to say it. There's also one called Basking in Reflected Glory, which is basically like hanging out with somebody who's a great example of the kind of self you want to be identified as. Yeah. Not necessarily good. It's much better to blaze your own trail, make your own version. But I kind of, I get it. The one that's just not good at all is the downward comparison version.

which is putting someone down to show that you're not like them at all. Yeah, that's not a good thing to do. And again, all of this convey, like to convey all this stuff, you got to have a pretty good cognitive empathy and pretty good self-monitoring. You got to be able to read the room, read social cues, regulate your emotions. And again, I think this is why

People with like a narcissistic personality disorder may have a harder time, may have more difficulty doing stuff like this. For sure. Another break? We have 40 minutes in. Let's take our second break. All right. We'll be back. This is going to be a little beefy, guys, but we're into it. Learning stuff from Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

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Okay, Chuck, so just real quick before we keep going on, it's worth mentioning that forming an online identity is essentially, it's like a whole new can of worms. Yeah. As far as sociology is concerned. We just couldn't do it before, and it allows you to do things, try on new things in ways that it was just impossible to previously. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, that could be a shorty or something on its own, huh? Uh-huh, for sure. Should we talk about authenticity, though, a little more? Yeah.

Yeah, because again, this is everybody wants to be viewed as authentic. And just the fact that you've realized now that you're performing at all times can make you feel like you're not authentic. But we're here to tell you you're still authentic. Yeah, for sure. There have been researchers that I mean, it kind of depends. You can there are a lot of ways to I don't like saying skin a cat anymore to tackle the cat. Now, there's a lot of ways to pet the cat. We're not we're not saying skin the cat anymore.

I don't know. I mean, it just occurred to me. That's a pretty horrific thing to think about. Yeah, I don't know where that came from, but sure. I guess I can get on board with that. All right. There's a lot of ways to pet a cat. Actually, there's only one way, and that's with the grain. But anyway. How about skin your knee?

Sure. There's a lot of ways to skin your knee, like a 54-year-old wrecking his new BMX bike. Exactly. Some people say there's a real distinction between self-presentation, which is like the influence that you're feeling by pressure and the effort that you're putting out, and then self-expression, which is your authentic self. But there are psychologists, or I'm sorry, I guess psychologists in this case, a guy named Barry R. Schlenker,

who says that actually self-presentation is, everyone does it in all social interactions. Like even if you're married,

you're influencing each other and behaving in a certain way. It may not even require like attention and probably doesn't if you're married. But it doesn't mean you're being inauthentic if you're still doing that kind of within your marriage. No. And even like within yourself, like when we did the inner dialogue episode, we talked at some point about how even when you're talking to yourself, that inner voice is often shaped by external forces, right?

And some sociologists say, yeah, even it goes even that far. That's how far the self is shaped by these scripts and these performances and everything that even when you're alone, you still might find yourself engaging in some performance or another. Yeah. And the stuff that we feel like is automatic. And you kind of touched on this earlier is maybe not automatic. You may not even realize that this is stuff that you've been practicing your whole life.

I think anyone who's ever had a kid has seen that kid like practicing faces in the mirror. There's some I mean, a very tropey movie scene is someone who practices a scene in the mirror of like interacting with someone like, oh, let me get that chair for you and practicing a smile. I mean, Nathan Fielder has a whole show about this called The Rehearsal. It's fascinating. Yeah, I love that guy. Are you watching the new season yet? No, no. Is that the one that's an actual like it's fiction?

No, no, no. That was the one he did with Emma Stone. This is the rehearsal season two, which is he sets up these elaborate rehearsals for everyday life stuff. Okay. You should check out season one and then just steamroll into season two. It's fascinating sociological stuff. Nice. I definitely will. Yeah.

Do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? I know you rehearse like what you're doing next. Like if you're cooking something, you've said that before. But do you ever like practice in your head what you're going to say? Like even mundane stuff? Like what am I going to say to this convenience store clerk when I go to check out? No, all that stuff is pretty innate for me. That's very lucky. But again, maybe innate from years and years of practice. Yeah. Yeah.

It's possible. Or maybe you were just born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline. So you mentioned the automatic stuff that is essentially breathing. Like if you look at how Schlenker describes it, he's describing the same thing as breathing. Like it's just that automatic. Yeah.

And that automatic mode can be in a high gear or low gear. And typically, if you're backstage hanging out with your friends, embarrassment. Again, the driver here is preventing embarrassment.

Preventing from embarrassing yourself, preventing embarrassing other people or making them feel embarrassed by association. Like you're preventing embarrassment. And one of the reasons why it's easier to hang out with people in your backstage mode is because the stakes are low. If you embarrass yourself, it doesn't matter nearly as much as if you embarrass yourself, you know, if you pee your pants in a job interview. Yeah.

Although the funny, ironic thing for us is, and I believe anyone that performs on stage, literally backstage sometimes can be some of the most anxious when you're

People are sent back there like, you know, oh, the company wants to send back these strangers you don't know. I hate that. That's almost the height for me of like, oh, boy, here, I got to turn on the chuck, you know. Yeah. And I just want to apologize for the group of Citibank cardholders from like 10 years ago who we had a meet and greet with. And it was very awkward. So sorry, guys. We never really got to say sorry. That's why we don't do meet and greets anymore. It's just...

Yeah. We just want to be backstage with our homies. Exactly. Yeah. So there's also we can also automatically go into a much more performative mode when the stakes get a little higher. Yeah. But either way, it's still automatic.

So Schlenker is like, no, we're really kind of performing almost at all times. And then there was a scholar of gender named Judith Butler. And by was, I mean is. And Judith Butler said everything about you is shaped by sociological forces, including gender, that people learn how to behave differently.

according to what society says their gender is or what's expected of that gender. And that's just how we learn to behave certain ways according to gender.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of grown men who have a story where they're like, when I was in the third grade, I played with dolls and I got made fun of. And because that wasn't the socially acceptable, you know, masculine construct. And from that day forward, I started doing things to where I fit in a little more on the playground. And that shapes how they are, you know, decades later sometimes. Right. Yeah. Carried over from the playground into the rest of their life.

Yeah. And this stuff is all changing for the better, I think. But it's still it's not like it's been eradicated, you know. Yeah. And speaking of gender, too, I wondered if you know how some people are just deeply offended by people who are gender fluid, like to the point where you're like, what? You don't even know this person. Why do you hate this so much? Yeah.

It made me wonder, like, if the person who's so offended by it is upset because that other person is flagrantly violating a social script and it's making them and other people uncomfortable. And that brings up a further point, too. Which is more valuable, that person's authentic self, that they're gender fluid, or the comfort of everybody else, the strangers around them? Which one is more valuable? Who should win out in that case if there's a conflict like that?

Absolutely. I mean, sadly, stuff like that is being literally litigated, but also the idea of changing social norms. And, you know, if you're not rolling with the changes that are happening in society, you may find yourself on an island of inacceptance and loneliness. But that may be fine with you because you may want to be like, no, things were better the old way. At the same time, too.

You can't change social norms without violating them. They tend to just kind of stay static. And to make them dynamic, they have to be violated. And anyone who's seen the movie Pleasantville knows that that can turn out pretty good. You may end up in color one day. Man, that was a good movie. Yeah, that was pretty good. I haven't seen that in a while. Yeah, I saw it a couple of years ago. I watch it every couple of years. Oh, OK. I've only seen it once. Oh, you should keep watching. Just buy the DVD. Go old school.

All right. I mean, there's a lot of movies that kind of dance around this stuff, like The Truman Show. And just, you know, I feel like this is just rife ground for comedy and drama. I agree, Chuck. Rife? Ripe? Ripe. Purple.

So, you know, I mentioned neurodivergence earlier and just sort of my and I, you know, when I was doing this research, I had that awakening of like, yeah, I've been much more cognizant of that kind of stuff as I've gotten older. And that stuff is more in the forefront and diagnosed more and more about like understanding that, hey, that person that I think is like, man, read the room. Why are you acting like that? They may have something going on neurodivergently. There may be a genuine mental illness there.

Goffman argued that if you have a mental illness or any sort of thing, a disability, or if you are unhoused or you're obese or a drug user, that all just lumps you in as a thing. I mean, a stigma, which we're going to talk more about in a second, basically. And it ends up sort of creating the symptom of that thing just because you're put in that population.

that box. Yeah. And so anybody who has a social stigma, like you just mentioned, you rattled off that list, they're what Goffman called discredited. They don't have, they're not, they have less value according to society. And if you, this is where he developed that empathy from researching this stuff,

I bet. Especially based on something like someone's ethnicity or whether they're handicapped or whether they're homeless or whatever, that the idea that they have less value

socially speaking in this sense, is totally unfair because the social norms that we create are generally arbitrary. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And not all cases, but impression management is a tool that people can use to get over or hide those stigmatized features. I mean, we can't get super into code switching, right?

but that could be a pretty interesting short stuff to accompany this, I think.

That is the idea. And it's not specific to the African-American community, but it is. If you talk to a group of African-Americans in the United States today or, you know, for many years now, they will say, no, code switching is how we get by and white America, basically. And that's the idea that you may change the way you talk when you're around white people or change the way you act.

than you normally would when you're in, you know, around your family and friends or your own community. And that's a big, big thing. Yeah. And that's a great example of it. You could also be like, my last name sounds pretty ethnic and I want to change it so that people call me back for job interviews.

There's a lot of stuff you can do. So you're not you're covering your stigma. So you're not an automatically discredited person. But according to Goffman, you're discreditable. If you're found out, you will be stigmatized. So, yeah, for sure. It's a terrible situation all around just to stigmatize groups based on arbitrary social norms. I hate it. Yeah.

I remember in elementary school, I'm not going to name her name name because I don't know if she would want this out there. But there was a girl from, you know, an Indian American girl in our school that came back after a summer with an Americanized first name. And so she was that from fourth grade till senior in high school when we graduated together. And I lost touch with her. And like five or six years ago, my good friend in Boston said,

said, oh, well, so-and-so's in town. I said, oh, is she going by that name now again? And she went back to her, you know, she grew up a little bit and was like, no, that's my name. That's my Indian name. And it just made me feel really good that she reached that point, you know. Good for her. Yeah, it was great. So, you know, the furthest end of this journey

I guess, spectrum is autism. And we've talked about autism here and there. But a lot of times if you have autism, you might have difficulty responding in what people might consider an appropriate way in a social situation. And masking is a big problem.

can be a big part of self-presentation when it comes to people with autism. Yes, but there's autism researchers, Amy Pearson and Kieran Rose, and they make, they go to great pains to basically say masking is different than impression management. Right. Impression management is something everyone has to do. Masking is specific to typically neurodivergent people to where they are protecting themselves by facial

pushing down their actual identities and hiding it at all costs because they're afraid of being stigmatized, because they've been taught over the years that that's not they're not acceptable as they are. And so those are those are two really different things, even though they seem pretty like they have a lot in common. Yeah, for sure. And masking, you know, there are all kinds of people who mask. We talked about that in the

sociopath episode once again and got emails from people that are like, I'm a sociopath and I put on a big performance so people don't know that. Yeah. Yeah. They're just always walking around like, I love you, man. Right.

Yeah. Just one note about autism, which obviously deserves its own episode, still coming down the pike one day. Don't worry about that. But you were talking about just kind of learning as you get older, you know, that you can't just make assumptions about people based on their ability to interact socially. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want to develop a familiarity and empathy for people with autism, I think you could do a lot worse than starting with Love on the Spectrum. All seasons, Australian version and American version. I think that is very sweet because that is like the fifth time you've recommended that show to people. People need to watch the show. It's so great. This season in America deserves an Emmy. It's a masterpiece.

I've still never seen it. You really should. I think you'd love it. So I guess, Chuck, since I did my every 10th episode mention of Love on the Spectrum, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. I love the show. This is about popcorn, by the way. Okay. Just finished the podcast on popcorn. It reminds me of a segment I saw years ago on Alton Brown's Good Eats. Alton Brown, Atlantan. And I did a little work on that show back in the day as a props guy. Nice.

While not directly related to popcorn, and Alton was a good dude to work with, by the way. Nice. While not directly related to popcorn in this particular episode, the show's resident food anthropologist related a factoid on Montezuma's revenge...

They thought Montezuma's real revenge was allowing the conquering Spaniards to return to Spain with maize without the knowledge of nixtamalization, which resulted in widespread pellagra causing dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and eventual death due to a lack of essential nutrients, niacin, and tryptophan in their diets.

Nixtamalization is a traditional Mesoamerican process used to prepare maize and other grains for consumption involving cooking the grain in an alkaline solution, typically lime water, which then allows for the outer pericarp, the skin, to be easily removed. The process significantly improves the digestibility and nutritional value of the grain. And that is from Bob. Bob, that was a great email. Yeah. A top-notch one. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Okay.

Agreed. If you want to be like Bob and send us a really interesting top-notch email, we love that kind of thing, you can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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